WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

Search This Blog

WATCH OUR MONTHLY WEBtv SHOW

SUPPORT OTT ON PATREON

Click on this logo to find out more about helping CFZtv and getting some smashing rewards...

SIGN UP FOR OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...

Wednesday, January 08, 2014

"Exceptionally rare" conjoined whale twins have been found dead in a lagoon in Mexico. Fishermen found the grey whale calves in the Ojo de Liebre lagoon in the Baja California peninsula, which opens up to the Pacific Ocean. The four-metre (13 feet) long creatures, which weighed nearly half a tonne, were linked at the mid-section.

They had two full heads and tail fins, according to Benito Bermudez, a marine biologist and regional manager at the National Natural Protected Areas Commission. Mr Bermudez said the discovery was "without any precedent" in the region, which is in the north-west of the country. It is believed the whales were born as the result of a miscarriage and did not survive for long.

Scientists were examining the carcasses and plan to look for other cases in the animal's habitat off the peninsula.

A belief in the literal Biblical version of creation may boil down, in part, to personality.

A new study suggests that people who believe in creationism are more likely to prefer to take in information via their senses versus via intuition. In contrast, religious believers who see the Bible's creation story as symbolic tend to be more intuitive.

"Intuitives tend to be much more at home with symbolic things, generally," said Andrew Village, the head of the theology and religious studies program at York St. John University in the United Kingdom.

Personality and religion

Village, an Anglican priest, is also a former scientist — before he trained in the ministry, he studied the ecology of birds of prey. He applied that scientific sensibility in the new study, which surveyed 663 English churchgoers on their beliefs about Genesis, the book of the Bible that describes the Earth's creation. [The Top 10 Creation Stories]

The 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin in 2009 prompted great interest in beliefs about evolution and creationism, Village told LiveScience. Creationism is the belief that God created humans and animals in their current form, as described in Genesis. The most literal of these beliefs holds that God created the universe in six days.

Previous studies have suggested that personality influences whether people will become religious, and if they are religious, what tradition they will gravitate toward, Village said. He wanted to investigate how personality influenced beliefs about Genesis, specifically.

The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we are publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. The worldwide mystery cat phenomenon (or group of phenomena, if we are
to be more accurate) is not JUST about cryptozoology. At its most basic
level it is about the relationship between our species and various
species of larger cat. That is why sometimes you will read stories
here that appear to have nothing to do with cryptozoology but have
everything to do with human/big cat interaction. As committed Forteans,
we believe that until we understand the nature of these interactions, we
have no hope of understanding the truth that we are seeking.

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me.
What should your criteria be when it comes to purported Bigfoot evidence?
Let’s start with what kind of evidence there is and then describe what makes some better than others. I will divide this topic into several different articles so they can be digested easier.

The most common is the eyewitness account. This is a person who claims to have come into visual range of a creature they believe is a Sasquatch. This evidence can be quite compelling because unless it is an outright lie, you usually have someone who is very excited because they believe they have witnessed something very few people can claim to have ever seen and a mythical creature to boot.

There is a certain element of shock that has to accompany this type of encounter that makes the retelling of it very convincing. As convincing as this can be however, there are several factors you must keep in mind if you are a critical thinker.
First off, as we have already mentioned, is this person telling you the truth and if so could they be omitting details that make their story more plausible such as was the lighting less than optimal when they had this encounter? I think that the majority of people who come forth with these types of stories are in fact telling the truth. For one, it can and does have an impact on a person’s reputation when they come forward with such a claim.

In the case of the anonymous story teller, there is much less to gauge truthfulness and even though we can understand why a person would choose to remain anonymous, we can only consider their story as just that, a story. In the case of the self-identified purporter, there are some very good reasons to ask the right questions as the audience to the claim.

The biggest hurdle you have to overcome as the listener is could this person have misidentified what they have seen? Questions to be asked should be, was it light or dark outside? How far away was this sighting from you? Are you familiar with other creatures that inhabit the area? Why were you in the location you were in when this sighting happened?

In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out-of-place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in. So after about six months of regular postings on the main bloggo Corinna took the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.

Another day, another rant! But the problem is that
I am not at all in a ranting mood. Things are actually going rather nicely.
Yesterday Saskia the intern (Ronan says that I should refer to her as my
amanuensis because 'intern' sounds rather American hospital tv show, or worse)
came and worked very hard, and there was even time for a ten-minute bass-guitar
lesson before she went home. We also had the kittens neutered last week and
they are both ready to go outside now, although I think that the weather is so
lousy that they would be insane if they wanted to. Mother is rapidly turning
into Mrs Doyle from FatherTed and follows me around the house with a dustpan
and brush, muttering about how untidy I am....

* The Gonzo Daily is a two-way process. If you
have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and
want to showcase your work or even just say hello, please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and
spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to
read us in order to grow and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more
traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word and maybe if we
all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow....

* The
Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about
artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has
other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly
newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this
link: www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html

* We should probably mention here that some of our
posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of
interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other
people's websites. Honest guv!

* Jon Downes, the editor of all these
ventures (and several others), is an old hippy of 54 who - together with his
orange cat (who is currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and two very small
kittens (one of whom is also orange) - puts it all together from a converted
potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon, which he shares with
various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his
lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law and
a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus... did we mention the orange
cat?